Depends on how you're splitting the workload. If you've got over 150 people actively working leads across the full deal flow, you're looking at an enterprise CRM like Salesforce or HubSpot, plus at least one dedicated dev for builds and maintenance. Seats can run anywhere from twenty to over two hundred quid per user per month, and the add-ons and integrations stack up fast - that's just the cost of playing in that tier.
If most of your team only needs to push data into the CRM - cold callers, campaign folks - and a core team of maybe twenty lead managers or closers actually works the leads, only those twenty need paid seats. Everyone else connects via integrations. In that scenario I'd go with Podio if you want heavy customisation and room to grow, or one of the simpler out-of-the-box tools that works from signup.
A thousand leads a month is fine for any of these options.
Every system has trade-offs. The only universal advice I'd give is to avoid the current wave of vibe-coded AI CRMs. Not anti-AI at all, but there are easily a trillion of them, all fighting to be the shiniest object. I stopped trying to track them. Wait until there's clearer proof of what actually works.
